[arch-general] change in mount behaviour?

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sun, 2012-01-29 at 22:41 +0100, Tom Gundersen wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 29, 2012 at 4:03 PM, Norbert Zeh <nzeh at cs.dal.ca> wrote:
> > Things I observed (on Ubuntu, Mint, openSUSE, Arch...so it's not
> > distro-specific) were way too low input (mic) and output volumes even when
> > setting the volume controls to 100%.  I really wanted to use PA because it
> > offers something ALSA does not: simultaneous audio streams from different
> > applications (i.e., when firing up Windows in a VirtualBox, it does not hog my
> > audio).  So I googled for hours, read through forum posts, etc. and all I could
> > find were hacks that either didn't work at all or resulted in the right volume
> > but at completely unacceptable distortion levels.
> >
> > So, I'm almost certain that I am doing something wrong with configuring my audio
> > setup using PA,
> 
> This sounds like a good, old-fashioned bug, I don't think you did
> anything wrong in your setup. Most likely your sound driver (ALSA) is
> exporting the wrong dB information to PulseAudio which means that PA's
> volume calculations will be nonsense. Please file a bug against ALSA.

Since the sound device is ok when using ALSA only, the +4dBu vs -10dBV
information or any ratio dB to fader position or what ever you mean,
must be somewhere provided correctly by ALSA. If such a dB issue should
be the cause, than I suspect PA pulls this information from the wrong
place. What happens, when using Arts or any other sound server?

In case of doubt file a bug report to ALSA and PA.

IIRC the sound device works correctly since years for ALSA, just when
using PA there's distortion. Is it reasonable to assume that there's a
bug for ALSA?

Perhaps an user error? If the device should support +4dBu and -10dBV,
than the user perhaps missed to choose the correct level. Nor ALSA
neither PA does know what equipment is connected to the audio IOs.